Alex Wilcock, also known as Richardandalex or Alexandrichard, is a former Liberal Democrat policymaker and always a convinced Liberal, a Doctor Who fan and married to Richard Flowers. You can probably tell.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Things To Remember About Labour #3

Labour opposed every single move towards Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender equality before they were for it. The Labour Government spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money fighting to keep discrimination in the armed forces and age of consent before the European Court found against them and they were forced to change the law. Now they shamelessly claim credit, like a crook caught by the cops and found guilty after a long trial they tried to escape… Then pretending they turned themselves in out of their own goodness. They voted against civil partnerships and in favour of Section 28, too, before belatedly U-turning and pretending they’d been in favour of equality all along.

Labour’s civil partnership laws were designed as a second-rate same-sex marriage, so they deliberately exclude mixed-sex couples; the original Liberal Democrat proposals that the Labour Government voted down in Parliament years earlier were gender-neutral and non-discriminatory. At the same time, the Scottish version of Section 28 was scrapped by Lib Dems in the Scottish Government while the Labour Government at Westminster kow-towed to the bigots for several extra years.

Today, the Labour Party continues to pretend it’s in the lead to the LGBT communities, while being very different to other audiences. The Liberal Democrats in Coalition Government are acting on putting Lib Dem policy in favour of equal marriage into law, while Labour tells the LGBT press they’re “pressing the Government” for it… Except that the Labour Party has no policy in favour of equal marriage, and explicitly opposed it when they had absolute power in government for thirteen years.

And just in the last week, we’ve seen yet again that Labour politicians are against homophobia when it suits them… But homophobic themselves again and again as long as it’s against someone they don’t like, like a Tory or a banker. ‘Some of my best friends are gay’ doesn’t cut it this century.

The Lib Dem position on LGBT rights is simpler and more principled – for equality when Labour was opposing it, for liberty before it was fashionable, Always Been There, Always Will.

Well, you’ve admitted that Labour’s homophobia was indefensible, and that you don’t give a toss about LGBT people, as whoever you pick at random is more important than any of us. And you make dubious snide quips. Nice. You’re not Ken Livingstone, by any chance?

As it happens, I don’t like much what’s gone on with either of your random examples, but you ignore the fact that the Lib Dems have limited power and even more limited money after Labour’s disastrous record.

Labour had the longest time in government they’ve ever had, all of it with absolute power, and most of it with enormous amounts of cash (even though they still spent much more than they had). So what they did wasn’t forced on them by compromise or circumstance – it was their choice.

And if your only answer to criticism is ‘Er… Look at something completely different!’ then Labour is always going to lose, because if you want to pick the worst thing on a government’s record, what UK government is going to beat Blair and Brown’s complicity in slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in their illegal war?

Something tells me the brilliance of your arguments are unlikely to last a couple of thousand years.